You want a new look for your home. You’re pressed for time, and the idea of scheduling meetings with an interior designer feels like more than you want to take on right now. You’ve visited the stores, looked at hundreds of sofas. You have dozens of paint chips taped to your wall. You’ve moved your furniture around in every possible configuration, and something still is not right about the layout. You’ve talked with the design staff at the local furniture store, but don’t want to be obligated to buy something in that store, just to get their design advice. You love to shop online, you network online, why not get your interior design help online?

Many homeowners are turning to the internet to engage interior design services. Instead of amassing files of clipped photos and magazine pages to share with your interior designer when you meet again in a week or two, internet links and photos can be shared instantly online. Now the design process is truly collaborative! Interior designers are finding that more and more of their client interactions have moved to emailing, and sourcing products online, so the move into virtual interior design services is a natural one for many design professionals.

Which services are right for web-based interior design?

Design concept – An web-based designer can work with you to develop an overall concept for your rooms. Working from your preferences, photographs, and the exchange of ideas, a virtual design board can be customized for you. A detailed shopping list is the companion to the design board so that you can shop at your own convenience, armed with information.

Furniture layout – An experienced designer can present you with a detailed layout for each room. The layout should include measurements for all furniture already in place, furniture you’ll need to purchase, and source links for items needed.. The layout should be easy to understand, and address the functions of the room.

Color schemes – While it would seem difficult to provide color assistance via the internet, without your designer seeing the colors in your space, wonderful color schemes can be easily created for your by your virtual designer. The most successful color consultations take the homeowner’s own preferences into account when selecting a final palette. A virtual design can provide you with a basic palette, with one or two alternatives, so that you can choose one that works best in your space, and feel confident that the scheme is just right.

Accessorizing – A web-based interior designer has access to thousands of items to accessorize your home. As interior designers, we view hundreds of decor options weekly, so that you don’t have to. Virtual designers can provide you with photos and purchase information for the perfect accessories to tie your interior design together.

Real Estate staging – A web-based interior designer can work from your photos to create a game plan to get your house sale-ready. Because 80% of homebuyers first find their home online, the concept of working from photos on the internet makes perfect sense.

Web-based interior design is perfect for anyone ready to make a change in their home. Busy people appreciate the convenience of working with a designer without having to work around a typical office schedule, and tech types love the way they can collaborate online. If you’re ready to try a new approach to a beautiful home, then web-based interior design is right for you.

A man contacted me about promoting his commercial interior design firm that he was starting. At that time he was working as a department store buyer where he was very bored in his job. He was interested in making a career change to interior designing. He had no formal training but had educated himself in interior design and had worked on some very small showroom and office design projects in an assisting role.

After meeting with him and learning his goals, I did some research into office and showroom designs, and the correlations between new designs and increased business. I discovered that office interior designing was a lot more plentiful but more competitive. The larger design firms concentrated on the office designing market. I decide for my client that it would be best if he would concentrate his efforts on the showroom design market which was less competitive and easier to break into.

I helped my client create a web site that would express his unique approach to designing showrooms. The web site allowed clients to request information on the different types and styles of showroom designs that my client has to offer. There would be articles and links to articles that would be of interest and help prospective clients with what type of showroom design would be best for their business. The web site would provide examples of other projects that were successfully done.

I wrote articles on the positive correlation between new designs and increased business and distributed them on the internet were clients would be looking for information. I included links in the articles back to my client’s web site. I created a newsletter for my client that contained helpful information to prospects by explaining several different ways of how new showroom designs can increase business. The newsletter contained links to my clients’ web site as well as links to articles and sources of information that would be of assistance to any potential prospects.

I created a print ad for the New York Real Estate Journal and wrote an article under my clients’ by-lines that appeared with the ad. After the article and ad appeared, I ordered reprints, wrote a solicitation letter, and bought a list of approximately 500 real estate lawyers (new showroom tenants typically have their lawyers negotiate their leases). The solicitation letters gave my clients web site address and where to find his newsletter. The solicitation letters were mailed with a bulk mail permit from a local post office. They were also sent via email.

A few weeks later after sending out the solicitation letter and reprints, a lawyer who represented a men’s suit designer company responded to our ads. I prepared for my client a four color brochure, a PowerPoint presentation, and a script to follow during his presentation. My client was up against 3 other firms competing for the contract. My client was rewarded the contract. The contract was for 1.5 million for a showroom on a very fashionable Manhattan street.

Five months after getting the contract to design this showroom my client completed the project. The showroom turned out to be a huge success for the men’s suit designer company. The company even recommended my client to an accessory manufacture and design company that the suit company was doing business with.

With the permission of the men’s suit designer company I arranged for several stories about their work to be published. I made changes on their web site to include the success that my client had with the suit design company’s show room design. I also included it in the next company newsletter that was going to be published. I repeated the process with the mailing list both of them (conventional mail and e-mail) promoting the success of my clients work. As a result, my client got three additional clothing design companies each of whom required large showrooms and offices

The success of the first contract allowed my client to break into a new market segment which is designing offices, which is the largest and most profitable in the interior design business. Here is where my client decided to expand his business; and in order to do this he must hire others who have the skills to execute the appropriate tasks at hand.

The other day, I was chatting with my friend, who happens to be an interior designer, and I remarked that it must be pretty easy to get work doing what he does. He stared at me and then started laughing. After he had quit cackling, he explained to me that interior design work wasn’t as glamorous as the TV shows made it sound. There’s a lot of real work involved, and even when you are excellent at what you do, you won’t always have people banging down your door to get you to design their houses and workspaces. By taking a quick look at some of the marketing tips for interior designers that my friend passed on to me, and taking a look at what I’ve figured out my own, you’ll soon see that there are some things that are essential.

First, you will need a professionally designed web page. Because people are going to be looking at you to design their living spaces and their work spaces, you’ll find that you need to grab them with your design aesthetic the moment they get to your page. Of course, a well-designed web space has nothing to do with how good you are at your job, but it’s all about presentation and awareness. If you have a web page that’s dark, cramped, poorly designed and ugly, you’ll find that no matter what your portfolio looks like that people will assume that’s how your design works. If you are not a professional at web design, it’s worth the money that you spend to hire someone who is.

Many good marketing tips for interior designers will be associated with how you can make people remember you. Whenever you finish a job, offer your client a way to get in touch with you. Whether you decide that you want to do this in the form of a magnet or some sort of client gift like a pen or an umbrella or gift basket, you’ll find that by leaving something of yourself in their home, you’ll make yourself accessible to anyone who comes in, whether they are guests or family. My friend suggests something like a magnet or a calender, because it is useful and people will always keep it handy.

Finally, remember to keep records of all of your work. You should always be able to give samples of what you can do and how you got there. The more progression shots that you can show online, the more you’ll be able to tell prospective customers how you are going to work some magic on their spaces. While of course you should have these pictures up on your website, you’ll find that having a hard copy that you keep to show clients in your office is another thing you can do.

My friend had a lot to say about marketing tips for interior designers but most of it could be summed up by saying “don’t let them forget you.” Remember that networking is a big deal, and that you have do a fair amount of it to get to where you want to be!